Flight
by The Wacky Wannabe Writer
Summary: Because some things just can't stay up in the air forever. A small series of short, interrelated Jinko oneshots, inspired by five totally unrelated, common words.


Hey all!

Yeah, this idea popped into my head... Oh, about three hours ago. I read something somewhere on a creative-writing site (I was bored) about stories that required words to be used or something. I decided to kind of take it further and used the words as my titles and they had to reference them directly, but also (At least partially) Be based around that word. Some were more successful in that respect than others. Yeah. Oh, and I came up with the words myself, because the others kind of sucked. I just thought up them up after a few seconds of thought, and the plot quickly followed. It was a beautiful creative process. I highly recommend it.

This is very experimental of me. I'm experimenting with several different styles here. Once, for instance, has no dialogue whatsoever, while another might have more dialogue than descriptive text. This is hardly the best thing I've ever done, and other than basic editing for typos and grammar, this went through few real changes. The order that they are in is the order in which I wrote them. They can be interrelated if you wish them to be. If it is, though, it's sad D: (Spoiler lol)

Feedback would be appreciated. Tell me what you liked, what you hated, what you thought didn't work, and such. I know I could easily have spend another two hours rigorously editing this, and I hope that I don't sound lazy when I say that I decided against this. The whole thing was thought up and written in about two hours. It was just this random burst of creative energy, and I feel that going back and meticulously correcting and editing everything would be detrimental to the overal feel of the text. But that's just me. If you disagree, then feel free to critique :D

This bears no relation at all to Ashes to Ashes, if you were wondering. I know you probably weren't, but I just thought that I would slip that in in case some people were unsure. This is Jinko, however (Dur)

Disclaimer: I own nothing, because I am totally cool like that.

Okay, I've gone on much longer than I should. You can go and read now. :D

* * *

**Choke.**

She was shouting again.

_Screaming_.

He'd ruined her life, she said. He had taken everything she loved away from her.

He tried to silence her passively.

He held up his arms, pleadingly, begging for her to stop. He was sorry, he said. He never meant for this to happen. He didn't think things would get this bad.

But she wouldn't stop. She had gotten herself worked up into a frenzy. She pushed him on to the bed, yelling at the top of her lungs, loud enough for the entire palace to hear. She called him a bastard. She called him a monster. She claimed to be trapped in a locked cage. She said that she would rather be a peasant, living in poverty than act as his china doll, to be dressed in elegant silk and left on a shelf to admire.

He protested that he never did that. Her response was to strike at him, with trembling fists while she sobbed.

She screamed that he did, it was his fault, his fault that she had turned in to this. He broke her wings. All she had ever had was the skill of her hands and her family, and she had lost both by marrying him.

He objected, said her family were always welcome to live here, that it was their choice to remain in their home city, and they had chosen not to.

She said that they wouldn't, because they were terrified. They didn't want to come near the centre of their century-long enemy.

He said that there was nothing he could do, there were traditions, rules that had stood for centuries, which she had to fulfil as the role of his wife. He couldn't change them.

She wouldn't stop. She kept on at him, screaming and yelling and sobbing and hitting, until finally he grabbed her fists, forcing her to stop. She twisted and squirmed under his grip, ordered him to let her go, but he refused to desist. She broke her hands free, and slapped him, hard across the face, still screaming, even though her voice had long since broken into a hoarse croak.

She protested that it was nothing like he promised. He said that she would get to learn, to continue to be as free as she was in her home, before everything turned sour. Instead, she was nothing but a bejewelled parrot, she said. She hadn't learned at the universities, they didn't let her, and although he had given final authority, they refused to teach her, and he could hardly force them to. She still painted, yeah, but she was ridiculed for doing so, labelled unladylike and crude. It was unfair, the way she had to force herself to change, to give up everything that gave her own life meaning for him, and he acted as though he didn't care. She called him a bastard, again, and worse, at the top of her weakening lungs.

It was desperation that drove him to wrap his hand around her neck. It was his turn to scream. He said that he was sorry, that she needed to shut up and listen, realise that it wasn't his fault, that he loved her and never wanted things to sink as low as they had. She bucked under his hold, scratched at his clamp on her until his arms were raw and bleeding, but he refused to let go, cutting off her air completely, hardly realising it until it was too late.

Finally, he finished his rant, his justification, and released his hands. Her eyes were closed. He thought she was ignoring him. Fine, he stood up. Be like that. He turned away from her, staring at himself in the mirror. Part of his hair had fallen out in the struggle, and he pulled the golden artefact free, combing his fingers through shoulder-length hair, fingertips brushing his scar.

Say something. He turned back to her, hand gripping the crown. Please.

Silence

I'm sorry. He tried again. I went too far. He walked towards the bed. I didn't mean to. I'm sorry. My anger just got the better of me. A deep, shaking breath. Say something, please.

His heart froze as he noticed that her chest wasn't moving, skin pallid, neck already purpling. He'd strangled her. Smothered her. Choked her.

Murderer.

With an inhuman wail, the golden crown clattered to the marble floor.

* * *

**Nose**

"Stop that."

"No."

"Jin, please."

"Why?"

He looked up at the olive-coloured eyes, the left eyebrow raised. A slender finger still rested on his face. He looked at her. She let out a high giggle.

"Because."

He turned his head to one side, pulling his face free from her touch. He grazed the thin, scratchy sheet, which had been pulled above their heads as they awoke, in the cold, grey hour before dawn, both for warmth, and to further increase the illusion of privacy. This was secret. Theirs.

"All right."

"Promise?"

He peeked at her out of his good eye. Her face looked genuine enough, at least. She nodded silently, and with a small smile, he settled back into his original position, on his back, with her willowy form settled against him, hot, naked skin touching.

"I promise. If you will."

He looked at her with confusion. A strand of hair, tucked behind her ear, fell free, grazing his collarbone and puddling against his neck.

"What am I promising?"

His hands rested against her. One in the small of her back, the impossibly silken skin so warm against his morning-cold hand, the other cupping the side of her face, the little finger slowly stoking a flushed cheek.

"Stay."

She breathed the word, almond-shaped eyes filled with a pleading that he had never seen before, never known. It was devotion she felt for him. Passion. Love.

"Of course."

He didn't need to think. He ignored the implications of his promise, ignored what others would say if they knew. Her face alighted with happiness, and she leaned down to kiss him. Her lips lingered, just for a few moments, before she slowly pulled apart. As she did so, their noses brushed against one another.

She kissed it with a giggle.

* * *

**Line**

"What on earth do you think you're doing?"

"Nothing much."

Jin dragged the ink brush along the page in a ragged line. It curled a little, slanting downwards toward the end. She looked over at the teenager across the table, who was watching her with his chin propped up by his palms.

"I get bored." She explained, dipping the brush back into her tray of ink. "When I paint. There's only so much you can do when you're given nothing. So, I just drag the brush across the page. I start with a line. I vary it, of course, but almost everything I paint now, starts with one random line. Sometimes it's short, or long, or straight, or curly, up, or down, whatever. I just go with it. And then I base what I paint around that line. I turn it into an image."

"... Strange." He frowned a little. She looked up at him, a little hurt. "Sorry, I just... I don't understand it."

"Did you ever learn how to paint?" Jin returned her eyes to the paper, biting on her lip a little in concentration.

"A little." He murmured, thinking about his rigid education as a child. "But not much... and definitely not anything like that."

"Because you did what you were told." She painted with quick, short strokes now, he noticed, her brush feathering across the page. "It was rigid. That's not what art is meant to be about."

"So, it's not about telling a story through a picture?" He challenged her, curiously.

"I never said that." She frowned a little, trying to phrase her thoughts. "It _is_ a story. It's just... That it's my story, you know? I'm not painting what I'm _seeing_, I'm painting what I'm _feeling_. What my soul is doing."

"Oh..." He blinked, trying hard to understand what she was trying to express. "I... Think that I get it..."

"It's okay if you don't." She said, deep in thought. "You had a restrained childhood. You couldn't express your true thoughts and feelings. Any beliefs you held were forced upon you. If you strayed from expectations, you were punished. You've learned to associate your own personal feelings with that punishment." Jin kept her eyes down on the page, thinking vaguely on her own family, who promoted emotional outbursts, honesty in all occasions, artistic interests, and openness with your own thoughts and feelings.

"I... Guess." It was hardly something he had thought of. He closed his eyes, resting on his hands, as he mulled what Jin has said over in his mind. He drifted off, slipping into a feather-light sleep, the drowsy, sunny afternoon too much for him to overcome.

"Finished." He jerked as she spoke, straightened himself. He stared around the little room in confusion. The light had changed. At least an hour and a half had passed. He turned his attention back to Jin who was holding up her painting, a small smile on her face. A bird. In full flight. Jin had turned the curvy line into its' underside, the breast and stomach and trailing legs. "Do you like it?"

"Wow." He murmured. "So... If this is your soul and feelings... what does it mean?"

"Silly." She giggled, setting the not-yet-dry painting down on the tabletop. "It's how I feel when I'm with you."

* * *

**Thunder**

"It's all right."

They were huddled in the hollowed-out remains of an ancient tree, Zuko's arm wrapped around her, pressing her close.

"I-I know."

She mumbled the words into his neck, shivering, from both fear, and the intense cold, her rain-soaked clothes clinging to already icy skin.

"It's just a storm."

He tried to soothe, her, raising his own core temperature until his clothes steamed and he sweated, so she could feel some of his warmth, murmuring sweet words of comfort into her ear, but it seemed that nothing could quell the tremors that wracked her body.

"I know, it just... Seems so much more."

She tried to phrase what it was she feeling, what the storm appeared to be telling her, that it was the Spirits, angered at them both, for what they had done, warning them, admonishing the pair for their wrongs.

"It's not."

He pressed his lips against her ear after breathing the words, tightening his grip on her wet, shivering form.

"We're horrible people."

She moaned the words, insides burning with crushing regret, and internal humiliation.

"No, we're not."

He understood that she might be afraid, after all, she hadn't killed before, she didn't understand that his was War, and in a War, you do what you have to, to ensure the survival of both your own body, and the ones that you love.

"It's getting worse."

She changed the topic, trying to forget what they had just done, trying to forget the blood on Zuko's clothes and the screams that tore through the night air just a couple of hours ago and the sickening groan of a man whose last remnants of life had floated away.

"It's just a storm."

He had to remind her, had to keep her grounded, had to keep her on track, had to remind her that they were on a mission, that they were going to save the world, and that killing a man who had a knife against Jin's throat with the promise that he would slit if they didn't comply was perfectly justified, and that she had no reason to be bowed down with such heavy guilt.

"It's a warning."

She remained stout in her decision, inwardly appalled that the one she loved was able to be so dismissive about the face that he had just ended a human _life_, that he had killed and even if he threatened to hurt her, that didn't justify murder, not by any means.

"It's just Thunder."

He felt her quaking increase, knowing that she had given way to sobs and was now crying against his skin, only he couldn't feel it because he had given himself the temperature of someone dying of fever and his clothes were steaming so much because of it and he was starting to get dizzy but it was okay because he was going to keep his head through all of this and keep Jin grounded and make sure that they would get through everything, they were going to be all right, they were going to go to Omashu, they were going to tell everyone what they knew, and they were going to win this War.

"Just... Thunder."

She repeated it, to herself, a mantra, until her mind gave way to exhaustion and she sank into a sleep, filled with dreams of blood and glinting metal and a man that shot lightning.

* * *

**Dance**

The entire room was looking at them, as they rightfully should. Some of the noblewomen whispered behind their hand, casting derisive, borderline reviled looks at the nervous-looking young girl who wore green while everyone else wore scarlet, gold and black, whose sun-burnished skin was so striking against a sea of aristocratic white.

Jin wasn't nervous. She had learned a long time ago that what people thought about her was utterly meaningless, and besides, it was only the nobility that had had a problem with her. The people of her own homeland, from all classes, approved of course, they were ecstatic that one of their own had married the most powerful man in the world, that children seated on the throne of the Fire Nation would have the stubborn, unmoving blood of the Earth Kingdom coursing through their veins.

That being said, she was, of course, eager to win them over. She hardly wanted to be ostracized at the Royal Court, and although she had new friends, she still got the strong impression that these people could make life very miserable for her if they disapproved.

That was why she had asked Ty Lee for lessons. The acrobatic girl had grown up in the glittering aristocracy, and she knew everything one must do in order to gain their favour. She taught Jin what to eat, how to talk, how to wear her hair, how to walk with the back straight and head held erect. But, most importantly, at least in Jin's eyes, she had taught the daughter of a poor seamstress and a potter how to dance.

Jin and Zuko stood exactly two feet opposite each other, hands touching, eyes locked. She knew the steps in her head, had murmured them to herself every night, and practised when she was alone in the Royal Chamber, closing her eyes and murmuring to herself. She knew the elaborate steps inside and out, could probably perform them backwards if need be, but that hardly dispelled the nerves. She was still absolutely terrified that she would make a mistake, turn herself, and Zuko into a laughing stock.

One, two, four, two, four, two, one, two, four, six, four, two, two, one, two.

They turned in a circle, the young couple, recently wed because royal tradition dictated they couldn't simply live together, and because they loved each other dearly and as everyone murmured, it was an excellent diplomatic tool. Jin kept her eyes closed, recounting the steps in her head with a thorough meticulousness, hands slightly shaking. The ball room watched, a myriad of painted faces, elaborate headdresses, and literally acres and acres of silk. Ty Lee stood in the front, there because she was a special guest and besides wanted to see her hours of hard work and training come to fruition.

As the song reached a crescendo, Jin opened her eyes, finding that Zuko was staring at her very intently, with the same level of concentration. She smiled, an expression he returned, fingers tightening against hers. The pace had risen, as she knew it would, and she was ready. Determination was strong. She was going to make these people realise that their interpretation of not just the Earth Kingdom, but the lower classes in general, were disastrously wrong, that anyone was capable of anything.

The song broke its' peak. Their steps slowed, until the song died away, and Zuko, bowing gently, kissed her hand, Jin's heart thudding, sweat which had formed on her brow a long time ago trickling down her temple. Ty Lee was grinning. She was perfect. Not a single step was out of place. She kept perfect timing. Her tempo was flawless, her motions admirable. If it weren't for the sun-beaten skin and the green silk, she would have passed off for a noblemans' daughter any day.

The ballroom broke into loud, but controlled, applause of approval. Satisfied, drained, exhausted, and both actually as nervous as the other, the wedded couple withdrew to the raised platform at the head of the hall, where their roped-off seats were located. Zuko was desperate to ask Jin as to where she had learned to dance like that, why she made the effort, what was wrong, was she worried about the approval of the aristocracy, and if there was any way he could help.

Jin just wanted to know just why Zuko's hands trembled as much as hers as they danced.

* * *

Woot! But yeah, it is a little sad.

Okay, for those who weren't sure of the chronological order (if you want to read it that way. I certainly did anyways and I'm the author so what I say goes nya ha ha. Jokes) It goes Nose, Line, Thunder, Dance, and Choke.

But yeah, feedback is greatly appreciated. I greatly value what you think (As long as it's not criticism JOKES. Seriously, Jokes).

Now, seeing as it is now.. Three twenty... TWO A.M... I think I should toddle off to bed.

Peace out, all. :D


End file.
